Toes

His name is Ezra. He is very small and quite new to this being-a-boy thing. He was born last week in Duluth.

He is a “Family” baby. The fact that he is still kind of pink and bald and wrinkly doesn’t bother us one bit. After all, we are partial to family babies around here and since newborn babies come so rarely to our family when one shows up, it’s Big News and we make fools of ourselves and get all gushy at the thought of another little dude running all over the yard up at the lake in a pair of bib overalls and a Twins cap.

For several generations, when it came to family babies, we were very consistent, thanks to the family gene pool. Everyone seemed to end up with very similar eyes, hair color, and strikingly similar, weirdly shaped toes. The toe thing has kept us amused at various family gatherings where alcohol has been consumed more often than is probably normal, but I digress.

Then, things began to change. First, there were two little people running around who we thought were pretty wonderful even though their toes were completely fine. Then, we had another couple who joined the Weird Familial Toe club, and that was pretty good, too. After that, two dark-haired, almond eyed babies joined us, then more whose toes matched, and then another brown-skinned baby girl with defect-free digits. Our family got much bigger and messier and whole lot more interesting.

A new generation of unions and marriages and miracles has blessed us with Christian, Elyza, and now, a tiny boy named Ezra. As I said before, we are all pretty excited to meet him because you see, we already know that he’s just exactly who we’ve been waiting for. He’s a family baby, after all. And we’re partial.